The thunder gods that live in the clouds were displeased and threw their lances of lightning at the ground to drive the evil subterranean spirits back into the bowels of the earth….But it sparked a wildfire and things are smokey around the valley here today.

Wait..that whole thunder gods throwing lighting lances is just silly superstition? And yet I’m seeing posts around the blogosphere saying that the earthquake near DC was the displeasure of some god being visited upon us mortals. Yeah….thunder gods are silly but THAT makes perfect sense.

It’s interesting to see Facebook and Twitter suddenly turn into a stream of “Holy crap! Earthquake!” postings.

I’m waiting for the conspiracy theories to start that Obama knew it was coming and thats why he and his family let town.

Montana isn’t immune to earthquakes…we’ve had a couple big ones in the past and I’ve felt a few small ones in my time here, but generally speaking earthquakes arent too big a concern out here. The most seismically active area around here is, unsurprisingly, down Yellowstone ways.

I have some friends and family back east and I look forward to hearing their reports on what happened.

I’m happy to sit here with my supplies and gear and not need any of it.

I was jawboning with a fella the other day and he mentioned something that I thought was amusing enough to repeat. He’s been wading in the shallow end of the preparedness pool for a few years, but only in the last year or so has he jumped into the deep end with both feet. He’s definitely of the opinion that he’s working against the clock on this one. Anyway, when Bin Laden was killed (or not killed, depending on if you have the shiny side or the dull side of the tinfoil on facing inside your hat) a friend of his called him up with the usual opening line of “Have you seen the news? Quick, go turn on your tv!”. He said at that moment he thought his buddy was calling him to tell him that the end of the world had started and all he could think was “Dammit, I’m not ready!” as every little detail he had unfinished came to him in a moment of perfect, clear recall.

I hate those moments.

I had them 1994 when the Assault Weapons Ban went through and I instantly had a mental image of exactly how many ‘high capacity’ magazines I had. And I thought to myself, “I’m not ready for this!” Fortunately, these moments dont happen often and when they turn out to be ‘false alarms’, as in the case of the fella in the first paragraph, it gives us a ‘whew!’ moment where we think we avoided a disaster and maybe we really should put off the vacation to the Grand Canyon this year and sink the money into freeze drieds and solar panels.

Everyone has a different idea about what flavor the apocalypse is going to be. The superstitious say it’ll be based on some religious prophecy (and, hey, howd that work out lately?), the Peak Oil crowd say its happening right now and we all need to go buy mules and leather harnesses for plows, the Scientologists (really a subset of the first group) figure its the Warth Of Xenu, and guys like me figure its a slow economic descent into a Soviet-era style of toilet paper lines and entropic failure. All of them, though, figure that its happening soon.

I’ve been kinda sorta waiting for something to happen for…mmmm…well, quite a while. Sometimes things that I’d think were catalysts for TEOTWAWKI turn out to be nothing, and sometimes stuff I never even considered comes outta left field and makes me think “hmmm…hadnt thought about that”.

So if you got one of those phone calls tomorrow, and you had that momentary flash of insight where all the things you have left undone and on the ‘to do’ list suddenly pop into your head, would you also think “I’m not ready” or would you think youre ‘ready enough’? I’d say we’re not as ready as we could be, but probably ready enough for most situations. There is, naturally, room for improvement.
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Speaking of room for improvement:
Man sacrifices self to save wife in tornado.
This fella is being lionized as an ideal husband who sacrificed himself to save his wife and is a role model that all husbands should emulate.
As my wife would say: WTF?
Lets assume for a moment that the role of the husband in the marriage is indeed to protect the family. Personally, I’m not a big fan of rigid gender roles in a relationship, but your mileage may vary…..however, lets say for the purpose of this discussion, it is the role of the husband to protect the family.
So, did this guy live up to that responsibility? Well, technically, yes. But if he was really going to protect his family, why didnt he take the steps to protect them from the predictable threat of a tornado? Sacrificing your life to save your family is noble, but it shouldnt be “Plan A”. His wife, I’m sure, wishes that his duty to protect her would have been fulfilled by having a stocked storm shelter where she could yell at him later for building that ugly thing in their yard, but at least he’d be alive for her to yell at.

Sure, maybe sometimes theres simply no other options but it sounds like if these people had a small storm shelter to retreat to theyd both be around today.

An interesting chart about radiation exposure that puts things into perspective. Not sure how accurate it is, but it’s certainly food for thought.

I was tossing out some trash at the shop and when Ii flipped open the lid on the dumpster I saw that, other than two items, the dumpster was empty. Item one was a broken picture frame, item two was a cast iron skillet. Hey, I like cooking with cast iron. Lets see who made it. Flipped it over and, surprise, its a late Griswold 11.5″. Hmmm. Okay, thats going home with me. Sprayed the whole thing with oven cleaner until it was covered in foam, shoved it in a plastic bag, and let it sit for a couple of days. Took it out, ran it under hot water and about 60% of the layers of seasoning washed right off. Excellent. Lather, rinse, repeat. Next week I’ll do the fine detail with some dental tools and steel wool and then reseason it a few times. Cast iron cookware is excellent stuff for cooking in disasters…its at home on a fire of salvaged 2×4′s or on the neighbors barbecue that didnt get swept away. Free cast iron is even better. And free Griswold is even better than that.
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The news about Japan continues to be virtually devoid of anything hopeful. I used to say that Katrina would be the paradigm for disaster planning for quite some time…well, it looks like Japan will surpass that. From here on out this event will be the benchmark that emergency management, rescue, governments and individuals use to proof their plans and gear. “Yeah, thats a great emergency rescue tool…how would it have worked in Japan?”, “Nice cotraflow traffic plan, Steve…would it have helped in Japan?”, “Donna, I want a PowerPoint presentation ready for the county commissioners by Monday about how we’d handle a nuclear accident like in Japan.”

Once the shock wears off and the demand dies down the folks that make nuclear survey gear, like the Nuk-Alert, are pretty much going to have some awesome sales figures over the next year or two.
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The survival/preparedness blogosphere is full of “If you were in Japan, what would you do” type posts. Lotsa Monday morning quarterbacking. Its only natural, I suppose. Certainly, many people are revisiting their ideas on disaster preparedness after this. I’m sure theres a smaller, superstitious faction that are sagely nodding their tinfoil-hatted heads and murmuring that it is all prophecy and that [2012/Rapture/Planet X/whatever] is surely not too far behind.

You know, sometimes all the bad crap just happens at once. No rhyme, no reason. It just does. About the only thing that could make this worse for the Japanese is Godzilla coming outta the surf with a mean look in his eye. Poor slobs.

One huge lesson that I think everyone can take away from this is that, apparently, Japanese government news and updates may be a little, shall we say, “unhelpful”. Or, more accurately, worthless. It appears that .gov has been downplaying, covering up, and otherwise diluting the news. This is further proof that in a crisis you cant afford to trust the official government story. The government isnt concerned about you as an individual, theyre concerned about you as a large population group. That is to say, the Japanese government may care about the population affected by the disaster, but they may not care about your grandmother who is caught up in it. In short, take the government reports with a grain of salt and cultivate other sources of info.

As I tool around the interweb looking for information about the aftermath of the earthquake/tsunami/Godzilla attack in Japan I keep seeing posts urging people to pray for the people in Japan. Pray to whom? The same god that sent the earthquake and tsunami? Thank you sir, may I have another?

The Japanese are a completely different culture from ours. Their mainstreamed interest in tentacle porn, dressing 40-year-old moms in sailor/schoolgirl outfits, and institutionalized xenophobia and sexism pretty much underscore that. But everyone pretty much agrees that, by and large, the national character of the Japanese, at least as it is portrayed to us Westerners, is that they are, above all, conformists. Part of the hive. “The nail that sticks up gets hammered down” as they like to say.

Will we see the classic post-disaster looting and violence that happens when a disaster strikes elsewhere in the world? I doubt it. Oh, sure…there’ll be some action here and there but by and large I’d imagine that its going to be a rather orderly and professional relief effort. Although the pictures of the damage are compelling, Im more interested in pictures and stories detailing the rescues and relief operations. These people have been expecting this sort of thing for quite some time, Im curious to see how their national preparedness pays off.

Then theres the little matter of that nuclear reactor that may or may not be melting down. Bad luck to get nuked by an enemy in a war…twice, really rotten luck to wind up doing it to yourself. I would think that the Chernobyl episode gave them a little bit of insight into how to manage a crisis like this.

Anyway, it should be interesting to see how things develop over the next few days. Already the interweb is abuzz with predictions that the increased frequency and intensity of earthquakes these days is proof that the end of the word is right around the corner…like, oh, 2012 or so. Still not buying it. Geological processes happen regardless of the calendar. All those Pacific locations are sitting on ticking time bombs and sometimes one of ‘em just goes blooey. No sinister, mystical or religious influence necessary.